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IPOffice.asia - China

Anyone ever heard of IPOffice.asia or been contacted by them? My client received an email from them stating that someone in China was trying to register her domain name. They only asked for her to confirm if she owns the name and if she has given this specific company permission to register it.

Is this suspicious or legitimate? Anybody know?
I filled a form out at ICANN asking the same, waiting for reply.

http://www.ipoffice.asia/ shows up as the place that 'protects' Intellectual Property in Asia. It 'protects' the country codes for the Top Level Domains for various Asia countries.

Unless your client represents someone like McDonald's or Nike (or is them) then I'd not be concerned. Their role would be to prevent someone registering a domain name such as nike.cn by someone other than nike.

This is a Powweb customer
helping Powweb customer forum.
I am a customer just like you!!Some matters can only be answered by staff or support.Give it a go - ask here first!

I have seen a few of these. I actually think it is a scam/fishing to get you to buy the domain. I could be wrong, but I always figured that if I did claim to be the owner then they would offer to have me register the domain through them and they would get a sale.

Thank you everyone. I'm thinking this is an attempt to alarm my client so that she would purchase all those domain names from them.
She replied to the first mail and confirmed that she owns the domain name , gardnerah.com, and that she has not authorized anyone else to use or register it.
Here is the reply to that:

Thanks for your reply.We are handling this case now.

According to your reply,I know that your company has not authorized the registration.As soon as receiving the application of our client,we checked and found the original keyword domain name "gardnerah.com" is your company's registered. In order to avoid legal disputes,we sent email to inform you.

You should know that following domain names and Brand Name's registration is operated under the rule of "First register,First use",our client also has the right to apply for the available domain names and Brand Name that have not been registered with your company's name.For this reason our client is also a rightful applicant and we have no right to reject them.Your company as the original named company only own the Preferential Rights to register and Protect these domain names and Brand Name.Please note,the Brand Name has been not registered,you may just register your Company Name or Trademark in your LOCAL.
At present,we haven't passed their application,we need your opinion:

1. If you don't think their application of following names will affect your company or have brand threaten in the future,then my suggestion is your company give up the following domain names and Brand Name,so that we can complete the following registration for them as per our duty.We will respect your choice.
2. Of course,each company has their own idea.If your company consider following names of importance to your company's business or interest,and need use the names in the future,I suggest that your company use the Preferential Rights to register and Protect these names firstly under your company so as to avoid cybersquatting,confusion or speculation.
If you want to register and protect the following domain names and Brand Name,please let me know,we will send a Dispute Application Form and the procedure to you so that you can register and protect the domain names and Brand Name.Please note the fact that we dealt with lots of cases of cybersquatting,and confusion because of names were pretended by others before.
Following Brand Name and domain names (Which are NOT and different to your registered Local mark/company name) are applied for by our client:
1. Brand Name:
Gardnerah

Please inform us your company's decision ASAP in order to handle this issue better.Thanks!

I'm a bit confused by the use of the term "Brand Name". My client is a veterinarian - the website is gardnerah.com - which is short for Gardner Animal Hospital. So gardnerah is not and never was meant to be a brand name.

This (and the first, and more to follow, if responded to again) are exactly what entrecon described in his post. They are simply efforts by this organization to get money by having these other domain names bought, which they will of course help your client (in this case) do. Tell your client to just ignore the emails.

I have received similar emails a few times in the 10+ years that I have owned my domain, somdcomputerguy. To be frank, I could care less if somebody in China wants to register somdcomputerguy.cn..

Take notice of the TLD extensions. They are not .com, .net, .org.. Domain names with the extensions listed in the email, I'm almost 100% sure, can only be registered by a person or organization that can prove to live or exist in the Far East, and they would have no problem helping somebody else do that..

Last edited by snowmaker; 7-3-14 at 10:39 AM.

-bruce/* somdcomputerguy */'If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.'